The Florida sheriff vs. the neo-Nazi 'scumbags'

[brooklynite]

Washingotn Post

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Did Sheriff Michael J. Chitwood know how easy it was to make a laser weapon? Did he know that a laser weapon could be remote-controlled, shoot invisible beams and blind him in 1/15th of a second?

“Do you have any idea how cheap it is to build a laser weapon that can start fires, blind for life and even cause dark colored skin to outright explode?” read the email pinging his iPhone, subject line: You are an enemy of the American people.

...snip...

The “scumbags” had emailed him dozens of times over the past month. He suspected that they’d reported a phony murder-suicide at his parents’ address, sending a SWAT team to their door, long guns out, at 1:15 a.m. He suspected that they were the one who’d posted his cellphone number on 4chan, encouraging others to join a campaign of calls and texts that so clogged his screen, he’d just placed an order for a burner phone.

So went another evening in his fight against the “scumbags,” which is what he called the group of men who’d used a laser projector in February to cast Nazi-glorifying text on the Daytona International Speedway — “Hitler was right” — and anyone who supported their in-your-face displays of antisemitism.

[Abolishinist]

1. This is a fascinating article, a glimpse into the life of

someone I wouldn't always agree with, but he does have principles and a man-in-the-trenches way of looking at how things are. There is no way I could do his job.

I was reading this online and found it interesting enough to see if anyone here had posted it. The limits of the first amendment are put to the test, and I tend to agree with him that certain things need to be reined in. And he often has to walk a fine line between what he wants to accomplish and those whose support he needs, such as

Poland and Germany criminalize promoting Nazism, which, according to those nations’ leaders, encourages dehumanization, which encourages bloodshed. Unlike here.

Chitwood thought that should change, so, the next day, he rolled to a meeting across town with Volusia County’s Jewish Federation and Rep. Randy Fine, a Jewish Republican in the Florida Capitol, who was sponsoring a bill that would make dropping antisemitic fliers on private lawns — or laser-projecting “Hitler was right” on private property — a felony hate crime.

Thus far, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were supporting House Bill 269, and Chitwood had been urging them to pass it before the Speedway’s NASCAR races in August, “so I can actually do something about this.”

He’d been talking regularly with Fine, and holding his tongue on other bills Fine backed, including an attempt to outlaw “men dressing up as women” in front of children — anti-drag queen legislation that Chitwood saw as misguided.

For years, he’d sported a bikini top in a jokey Daytona Beach fashion show to raise money for fighting breast cancer. Some “scumbags” had printed a photo of that on a flier the week before, dubbing him “Cross-dressing Sheriff Mike Chitwood.”

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

https://archive.ph/c2Xte

Jon Eugene Minadeo Jr., the group’s most public face, defended his actions to The Washington Post. “I don’t do anything illegal,” he said. “And if I did, I’d get thrown in jail ... I don’t promote or endorse any violence." Minadeo denied partaking in a harassment campaign against Chitwood.

Some confidantes advised Chitwood, who is White and Catholic, to surveil Minadeo’s crew quietly. Holding back seemed worse, he figured.

He invited news crews to a PowerPoint presentation of their criminal histories, mug shots included, noting that one member of the group had been arrested in 2020 for soliciting sex online from a 14-year-old girl. Chitwood made plans to erect a billboard of another’s mug shot in his Georgia hometown.

He tweeted that Minadeo, 40, was a failed actor, failed rapper and failed dish washer, writing, “this is where white supremacy takes you.”

[Buns_of_Fire]

3. Minadeo is a real piece of... work.

Minadeo grew up in northern California, Novato, where he had lived with his mother in various apartments.[5] He dropped out of Novato High School in the early 2000s and later received a GED. He worked at his grandmother's restaurant, Dinucci’s Italian Dinners, in Valley Ford. His family has a Mexican-American background.[6] Sources claim that there was a rupture in his family and that he has rarely held a steady job since leaving the restaurant. In a March 2022 interview with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Minadeo claimed that he does some construction work and that he'd "probably have to leave Petaluma because things are growing so uncomfortable for him."[3][7]

He had been living in Petaluma until December 2022 when he and his girlfriend Kelly Johnson moved to Florida.[5][8][9] Johnson, a yoga instructor, had been fired from two yoga studios in the Bay Area in March 2022 for her connections with Minadeo and for increasingly bigoted comments.[10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Minadeo_II

Chased out of California, he migrated to Florida where he seems to have found kindred spirits in the current governor and state legislature.